When 20-year-old Atlanta singer Raury (a onetime MTV Artist to Watch) began his performance of “Devil’s Whisper” on MTV’s “The People’s Playhouse” election special, he was wearing a denim jacket. (Well, sort of — it hung off his left shoulder, but it was mostly there.) And four minutes later, after he’d belted out the song’s vowel-rich hook and stomped around the stage conjuring the demonic trickery of the song’s subject matter, Raury stood there, once again denim-clad.

But between these two moments, in the middle of “Devil’s Whisper,” he ripped the jacket off.

It was a powerful symbol of the song’s rising intensity, which eventually gives way to a resignation at the end and finishes in a flourish of percussion. And, you know, since this all happened on election night, there’s a metaphor here about breaking points and intensity and all that — and Raury needed to take a breath before he talked to MTV about his own path of voting.

Eventually he did, saying that Hillary Clinton has some “sus emails” and that Donald Trump is a “blatant, raging racist.” Bipartisanism at its finest.